5 College Terrace, Rock Road, Londonderry, County Londonderry, BT48 7NZ

5 College Terrace, College Terrace, Rock Road, Londonderry

This is a Victorian mid-terrace redbrick townhouse of two storeys with an attic, built in 1889–90 as one of a uniform row of thirteen similar houses lining the eastern side of College Terrace. The street curves gently close to the junction of Rock Road and Strand Road, on the north side of the city centre and on the eastern bank of the River Foyle. The terrace was originally built by the Trustees of Magee College to house college employees, and the row as a whole holds group value as a significant feature of the Magee Conservation Area.

Architectural Description

The house is rectangular on plan, with its principal elevation facing west onto College Terrace, set directly at the back of the pavement and overlooking an urban tree-lined green. Numbers 4 and 5 are slightly larger than the other houses in the row because they sit where the terrace bends along the curve of the street.

The west (front) elevation is laid in Flemish brick bond with ornate Victorian industrial brickwork dressings in a contrasting colour. A dentilled brick cornice runs at eaves level, with black brick dressings below. A continuous decorative brick stringcourse in contrasting colour runs at ground-floor level, first-floor level, and below the dormer window. All openings are framed with red and black brick voussoirs.

At ground-floor level there is a single segmental arch-headed window opening; at first-floor level there are two segmental arch-headed window openings; and at attic level a single small semicircular arch-headed dormer window is centred on the elevation, finished with a decorative metal apex. Ground- and first-floor windows are 4/2 timber sliding sashes, with a small 4/2 sliding sash to the dormer above. All sills have a painted finish.

The entrance door opening is semicircular arch-headed, raised one step up from the pavement, with a painted four-panel timber door flanked by scrolled brackets on moulded timber architraves supporting a slightly projecting cornice with a plain fanlight above.

The roof is pitched natural slate with terracotta clay ridge tiles to both the main roof and the rear return. Two modern Velux rooflights are located to the rear. A large two-stage redbrick chimney stack rises from the north side, centred on the ridge, with clay pots. Cast-iron guttering and circular downpipes serve the front elevation.

The north and south sides are abutted by the adjoining No. 4 and No. 6 College Terrace respectively.

The east (rear) elevation is finished in rendered and painted render, with a two-storey rear return that steps down to a single-storey extension with a slated pitched roof. A projecting timber oriel window with stained glass and a lead roof is positioned on the gable elevation of the two-storey rear return. A uPVC casement window is present at first-floor level on the rear elevation, and there are two rooflights at attic level. The remainder of the rear elevations were not accessible to the surveyor at the time of the survey.

Materials throughout are natural slate to the roof, cast iron to the rainwater goods, brick to the principal walling, and timber sliding sash windows.

Historical Context

College Terrace was laid out in 1889–90 as part of the broader northward expansion of Londonderry that had begun in the mid-19th century with the construction of Georgian-style terraces on Great James Street, Queen Street, and Clarendon Street. This expansion was driven by a period of economic growth and prosperity lasting from the 1860s to the end of the 19th century.

The Rock Road, on which College Terrace sits, was first depicted on maps as early as 1689 but was not formally named until 1865. It takes its name from The Rock, a house and hamlet of smaller buildings once located off the Strand Road. One of the earliest photographs of Derry, taken around 1872, shows this hamlet as a small group of two-storey buildings near the banks of the Foyle, with Magee College standing alone on the hill above.

Magee University opened in 1865 as a seminary for young men pursuing a career in the Presbyterian Ministry. It was renamed the Presbyterian Theological College when it became a constituent college of the Royal University of Ireland in 1879. A period of intensive building activity followed between 1881 and 1911, during which three redbrick professors' houses were constructed to designs by Young & Mackenzie, W. A. Barker, and Robinson & Davidson. College Terrace and the three-storey redbrick houses of Clarence Avenue were built during this same period to provide accommodation for students and employees of the college.

College Terrace was originally constructed by the Trustees of Magee College for this purpose, but within a decade the majority of houses had passed to occupants unconnected with the campus. The first recorded occupant of No. 5 was a Mr Long. By 1901 the house was occupied by Robert and Sara Jane Gray, a married couple who were both teachers at Strand National School. The 1911 census building return described No. 5 as a second-class dwelling consisting of six rooms. By the 1930s a Ms Clara Boal had taken possession of the house and resided there until 1958.

The rateable value of the house was originally set at £10 in the Annual Revisions. This was raised to £20 under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) and further increased to £28 by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72).

Nos. 1–13 College Terrace were listed in 1980. Following Magee's incorporation into the University of Ulster in 1969, the majority of houses along College Terrace were converted from privately occupied dwellings to multiple-occupancy student accommodation. The Magee Conservation Area Design Guide records that this change came about in response to the negative impact of bars and nightclubs on the Strand Road on residential life in the area.

In 1987 No. 5 underwent a renovation that included repointing of the brickwork and chimney stack, installation of new floors to the first floor interior, and an overhaul of the sliding sash windows.

College Terrace was incorporated into the Magee Conservation Area in 2006, where it was identified, along with Rock Road and part of Northland Road, as a zone of distinct character. The Design Guide notes that the terrace's overall composition — including the pattern of stepped eaves, attic dormers, and chimneys combined with the high architectural quality of the detailing — adds considerably to the quality and variety of the wider Conservation Area. The gentle curve of College Terrace is specifically noted as a departure from the earlier rectangular squares at Crawford Square and De Burgh Terrace.

The writer Calley has remarked that College Terrace competes with Palace Street for the title of the most charming street in the city, observing that "the north side, which contains no buildings and borders the Magee campus, has a low schist wall topped with plain iron rails, behind which is a collection of mature trees, giving what is a small space the feeling of an oasis." The terrace faces west onto this low schist wall, which forms the boundary with the University of Ulster at Magee College. A rear alleyway runs the full length of the terrace, giving access to the rear yards of all thirteen houses.